Читать книгу This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Deborah Collins Stephens - Страница 29

“Sheryl, the hospice nurse who cared for Mike, had spent twenty-five years tending to the dying. I'm convinced that the blue-haired lady sent her to us. Sheryl's favorite saying was: ‘Deborah, this isn't my first rodeo and I hope you'll learn to trust me. I'm going to be with you every step of the way.’ Sheryl counseled me to live through this time with no regrets, and taught me that living with no regrets meant savoring the day, the hour, the moment. It meant letting no words pass through my lips that I would regret after Mike's death. When you live with someone who is dying, even the most mundane of days become important. You wonder: Is this the last minute? The last hour? The last day? The times are so stressful and heart-breaking and funny and memorable and devastating.

“Sheryl believed that people die in much the same way they have lived. Her words were true for Mike, as he refused to see death as a possibility. This admirable quality served him well in the fight against his disease. Yet now, facing death, that trait caused chaos, along with physical and emotional pain that seeped into all our lives. We undertook the task of encouraging Mike to surrender to his illness. Our children, Aaron and Lily, took on roles no children should ever have to fill. They sat with their dad, the hospice team, and the priest, and asked him to quit fighting. They gave him permission to die. Several weeks later, Mike's last words to me were: ‘You are so beautiful. I love you. Let's go home.’”